Old Friends, New Foes: President and a Preacher;One 60's Activist Runs Columbia; One Fights It

Published: May 31, 1996

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In 1968, Father Castle resigned from St. John's, feeling the church should have a black minister (though it got another white minister). The Archdiocese of Newark said it could find no position for him. It probably did not help Father Castle's prospects that he sporadically picketed the Bishop himself for belonging to segregated clubs.

He operated his father's machine shop and then, in 1970, "needing to get our lives in better gear," moved with his family to a farm in Holland, Vt. Black Panthers paid visits. For eight years, he ran a general store, until he lost interest after his 19-year-old son drowned. He worked in a mental health center and a home for troubled boys and rooted around for other opportunities.

Fate spoke up, but was just clearing its throat. Father Castle heard from a colleague that there was a staff opening at the Harvard Divinity School, where George Rupp was dean. The colleague phoned Dr. Rupp, who arranged an interview.

On the appointed day, Father Castle presented himself before an interrogatory group of professors. The first question, he felt, sank him. They asked him what he was reading. He said a book by Red Smith. "Who's Red Smith?" they wondered. "He's a sportswriter," he replied. "But a sort of holy sportswriter."

As he was leaving, he spied Dr. Rupp, gave a wave and shouted, "Thanks, George, but I want you to know I blew it."

The two fell out of touch again. In 1985, separated from his wife, his children grown, Father Castle decided it was time to go to New York and resume his struggle against what he felt was a white racist society. Not long after arriving, he was hired at St. Mary's, a largely black church in Harlem.

In short order, he commenced a hectoring relationship with Columbia (not to mention with mayors, police captains and just about everyone else commanding power in the city). Almost any time students demonstrated at Columbia, there was Father Castle exhorting them on. In December 1992, for instance, he supported protesters against Columbia's plans to convert the ballroom where Malcolm X was assassinated into a biomedical research center.

And now fate played its hand.

Father Castle read that George Rupp would become Columbia's president in July. He called his old friend in Houston. The intent was not to offer congratulations, though he thinks he might have mumbled a few. He told Dr. Rupp that he was concerned that students might be expelled for participating in the protest.

A Reminder To an Old Friend

Dr. Rupp said he was not yet in power. He also reminded him of something Father Castle had told him when the two faced a judge after their arrest in Jersey City: "Well, yesterday we dished it out. Today it's our time to take it."

Father Castle wonders if he ever uttered that in Jersey City, because he says he doesn't truly believe it. "I don't doubt George's word," he said. "But it's convenient for George to remember that line."

Not long after Dr. Rupp got to New York, he invited Father Castle to lunch. They revisited old times. Father Castle said his tuna fish sandwich was fair.

"He would like to see me or Columbia or any institution do more for people on the short end of the stick," Dr. Rupp said. "I never leave a conversation with Bob without feeling he'd like to have more."

A few months ago, Dr. Rupp decided to show up unannounced at St. Mary's for Sunday services. When Father Castle spotted him, he couldn't help himself. He pointed him out to the congregation and told them, "If you want anything from Columbia, here's your chance."

He felt it necessary to reiterate his view that Columbia was too arrogant in its attitude toward Harlem. Now and then, he likes to sing an old Columbia student song that he feels epitomizes Columbia's haughty attitude. He believes he sang it that morning: "Who owns New York? Who owns New York . . . We own New York. C-O-L-U-M-B-I-A."

Remembering the occasion, Dr. Rupp said, "I would have been surprised if I'd gone there and hadn't been needled."

Father Castle applauds activities like Columbia's Community Impact Program and the Double Discovery Center, both of which immerse students in the community. But he says he has seen no real advances in Columbia's relationship with Harlem since Dr. Rupp's arrival, though he did commend the marked improvement in the football team.

"When I and some others met with some of Columbia's representatives not long ago, they asked, 'What do you want?' " he said. "That's the same refrain I heard in Jersey City from one of the most corrupt administrations. It's as if everything would be O.K. if we could be able to swim in their pool from midnight to 2 in the morning. We don't want crumbs. We want more than that. We want a relationship. We want change."

He worries that Dr. Rupp is being given bad advice. "It will be much more likely to happen if he spends more time with me and not those fools that he listens to," he said.

Father Castle wants Columbia to use its wealth and influence to help the downtrodden. He feels Dr. Rupp should do something about the state of the public schools in New York. "I don't know, Columbia could withhold something from the city until they fix them," he said. He feels that with all its landholdings, the university should furnish housing for Harlem's needy and do something about declining medical services.

Dr. Rupp says that he continues to care deeply about "the terrible neglect and inattention of some of the key problems we have in our inner cities," and that he has worked to better Harlem's lot. But he said he would be derelict in his duties if he followed Father Castle's advice, since Columbia's resources are committed to education and research.

"I have a very high regard for Bob Castle and what he does," he said. "But I'm not Bob Castle, and if I took that advice I would be inappropriate to be president."

Ultimate Protest: Picketing Himself

There is no telling what will come of the minuet between the president and the preacher. They differ much in temperament. Dr. Rupp is even and measured, Father Castle often fiery and caustic.

There seems little likelihood that Father Castle will shed his irrepressible obtrusiveness. He finds it bemusing that St. Mary's stands directly across 126th Street from a police station. When police cars park on the curb along the block, he pastes fliers on the windshields declaring, "Do Not Drive Up Onto The Sidewalk."

By now, he has been arrested more than 20 times, most recently in 1991, when he protested a memorial service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine honoring those who fought in the Persian Gulf war. Last year, he feels he truly reached a watershed. Negotiations on a contract for workers at an AIDS center he founded had dragged on, provoking workers to picket. Even though Father Castle was the center's board chairman, his heart lay with the union. He joined the picket lines. He, in effect, picketed himself.

Ever since his cousin, Jonathan Demme, the movie producer, did a documentary about him called "Cousin Bobby" in 1992, Father Castle has embarked on a subsidiary Hollywood career playing priests and other bit parts in the movies. He has an agent. Just the other day, he read for a two-line part as an uncle "who could be in the F.B.I. or could be part of the underworld." Around St. Mary's, the staff calls him Father Hollywood.

Dr. Rupp seems wistful of their bond. "I still like and admire him now as I did then," he said. "He and I were members of the same kind of work group then and cannot be now and that makes it difficult for us to relate in the same way."

Father Castle keeps praying and prodding for more. "That Jersey City experience was very important, George," he said. "Let's get back on that track, George. Next time I'm going out on a civil disobedience action, I'll give you a call."

Photos: Like roads that diverge and intersect, two paths of idealismhave brought together old comrades in protest, but this time as adversaries: The Rev. Robert Castle, left, of St. Mary's Episcopal Church in Harlem, a persistent critic of Columbia, and George Rupp, Columbia University's president. (Photographs by Edward Keating/The New York Times)(pg. B4); George Rupp, left, president of Columbia University, and the Rev. Robert Castle of St. Mary's Church in Harlem, a former mentor who calls Columbia a poor neighbor. (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times)(pg. B1)